NO MENTAL GIANTS IN THIS STORYLINE

Come to think of it, there always has been something not quite kosher about Snow White.

Granted, it takes a sharp eye to see beyond her flawless complexion, her raven tresses and her sweet disposition, but any dedicated censor who searches diligently enough will inevitably uncover the sinister side of the fairy-tale beauty.

Consider her thinly disguised disrespect for her elders, her appetite for apples (an obvious biblical parallel there), her penchant for spending a lot of time in bed and her decision to set up housekeeping with seven weird little men!

Surely Duval County School Superintendent Larry Zenke was totally justified in recommending that Snow White be banned from kindergarten to second-grade classrooms. This public servant deserves a medal.

Unfortunately for Zenke, he has received not a medal, but a Muzzle. He is one of five recipients of 1993 Muzzle Awards from the Thomas Jefferson Center for Protection of Free Expression. The free-speech fanatics at the University of Virginia had the temerity to accuse Zenke of censorship simply because he is trying to protect the children of Jacksonville from the violence of the Grimm brothers' fable about a princess who was too pretty for her own good.

Zenke said he merely approved a recommendation from a panel of parents and teachers, who reviewed Snow White after a mother complained the story had caused her second-grader to have nightmares. Now that Snow White has received the figurative kiss of death, students must obtain parental permission to read it.

Duval County taxpayers, however, should be secure in the knowledge that the vigilant eyes of their schoolbook censors will refuse to blink, no matter how much the outside world may snicker.

And while we're on the subject, how about the blatant foot fetishism in Cinderella?